Introduction to MS Excel

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Microsoft Word is a powerful word-processing program that will take your documents far beyond what you can produce with a typewriter. Whether you want to create a simple letter to a friend, produce a newsletter for a professional organization, or even write a complicated, multiple-page report containing graphics and tables with numerical data, you will find the information that you need to quickly and easily get the job done in Microsoft Office Word.

History of Microsoft Word

1.1.2 Microsoft Word 1990

Microsoft Office for Windows is released otherwise known as “Office 1.0” office 1.0 contains Word 1.1, Excel 2.0 and PowerPoint 2.0. In the same year as this release, Microsoft becomes the first company to exceed $1billion in sales in one year.

1.1.3 Microsoft Word 1998

Word 1998 for the Macintosh gained many features of Microsoft Word 1997, and was bundled with the Macintosh Office 98 package. Document compatibility reached parity with Office 97 and Word on the Mac became a viable business alternative to its Windows counterpart. Unfortunately, Word on the Mac in this and later releases also became vulnerable tofuture macro viruses that could compromise Word (and Excel) documents, leading to theonly situation where viruses could be cross-platform. A Windows version of this wasonly bundled with the Japanese/Korean Microsoft Office 97 Powered By Word 98 and could not be purchased separately.

1.1.4 Microsoft Word 2002/XP

Microsoft Word 2002 was bundled with Office XP and it was released in 2001year. It had many of the same features as Microsoft Word 2000, but had a major new feature called the ‘Task Panes’, which gave quicker information and control to a lot of features that were before only available in a modal dialog boxes. One of the key advertising strategies for the software was there moval of the Office Assistant in favor of a new help system, although it was simply disabled by default.

1.1.5 Microsoft Word 2008

Microsoft Word 2008 is the most recent version of Microsoft Word for the Mac, released on January 15, 2008. It includes some new features from Word 2007, such as a ribbon-like feature that can be used to select page layouts and insert custom diagrams and images. Microsoft Word 2008 also features native support for the new Office Open XML format, although the old doc format can be set as a default.

1.1.6 Microsoft Word 2010

The next version Microsoft Word is scheduled to be released sometime in 2010. It will include any new features common to other applications in Office 2010. Microsoft Word 2010 will have the new WordArt styles and effects replacing the old styles.

1.2 Advantages of Microsoft Word

1.2.1 Word Columns

Newspapers, newsletters, magazines, and many websites format information in columns. Doing so allows for more flexibility in arranging topics within a larger document. In Word, using columns makes your information easy to find and read when creating newsletters and other documents.

1.2.2 Table

You also have tables, which are a grid of columns and rows and great for comparing or following information across several columns. If you have used Microsoft Excel or another spreadsheet program, you will find working with tables in Word very similar. In fact, on a very small scale, Word tables are small spreadsheets.

1.2.3 Graphics

You can also work with graphics, such as pictures, shapes, or diagrams. Using a few carefully placed graphics in your document can be just the enhancement the document needs to keep your reading audience interested. You’ll learn how to place them into your document and manipulate their size, color, arrangement, and more. Working with Word graphics is fun and easy.

1.2.4 Longer Documents

There’s more to Word than short letters and memos. Now that you are more comfortable with the basics of Word, you can view your documents from different perspectives and generally work with longer documents. In this part, you’ll discover outlines, mass mailings, and adding referencing information such as bibliographies, footnotes, tables of contents, and indexes. Using features like these makes creating legal briefs, annual reports, catalogs, and other complex documents much easier.

1.2.5 Printing

In many cases short documents can be printed only once at the end of editing. However, even in this case the look at the printed copy can lead to some alterations in the document contents and layout. This is because we perceive the on-screen document and the printed document differently. Maybe this will change in the future, but nowadays this difference in perception still exists. Therefore, even in the case of short documents there may be more than one printing. The situation is different in the case of long documents, such as book, text books, theses, manuals. Printing the edited document or some of its parts is just a necessary part of the work on a large project, so printing is repeated many times while working on the publication.

1.2.6 Making Bibliography

Usually a bibliography list is a list of book, journal articles, conference papers, patents, and unpublished works. Which is sorted either alphabetically by names of authors or in the order of appearance of the first reference to the cited work. Items of a bibliography list are usually denoted by numbers or other labels, which are used in the text for referring to sources. In books, textbooks, theses, and other extensive publications as a bibliography list is considered as a chapter level unit, so its title (the word References or Bibliography) should be formatted using the chapter heading style. For the same structural reasons, in such publications a bibliography list should start on an odd page.

1.2.7 Page Numbering

Besides text, equations, figures, tables, and other element, representing the information, which an author wishes to pass to readers, there are also important elements used for navigation in the book. An absolutely necessary part of any monograph, thesis, diploma work, or a textbook, is pagination, or page numbering. Navigation in text without page numbers is cumbersome. Even the presence of the table of contents or a word index implies that all pages are numbered to make locating information easier.

2.0 Introduction to Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel, the most popular and powerful worksheet program in the world. What is worksheet program? A worksheet is a program with a huge grid designed to display data in rows and columns where you can create calculations to perform mathematical, logical, and other types of operations on the data you enter. You can sort the data, enhance it, and manipulate it a plethora of ways including creating powerful charts and graphs from it. Whether you need a list of names and addresses, or a document to calculate next year’s sales revenue base on prior years’ performance, Excel is the application you want to use.

2.1 History of Microsoft Excel

• Excel 1

The first version of Microsoft Excel, was released for Macintosh systems by years 1985. By developing Microsoft Excel for the Macintosh first, Microsoft was able to take advantage of system’s graphical user interface (GUI) and mouse input device. They were also able to build up the program’s reputation while avoiding direct competition with Lotus 1-2-3.

• Excel 2 and 3

In year 1987, Microsoft launched Microsoft Excel 2 along with its Windows operating system. Windows borrowed many of the features of the Macintosh interface, which allowed Microsoft to give Microsoft Excel 2 all the graphical refinements of the Microsoft Excel 1, such as pull-down menus and point-and-click interaction. Excel 2 and its next version, Excel 3 (1990) year, experienced some popularity, though Lotus 1-2-3 continued to dominate the market.

• Excel 4 and 5

Excel 4 was released by 1992 year, the same year that Windows 3.1 was released. With this release, Microsoft Excel finally begins to dominate the spreadsheet market. This also marks the first time that Excel is bundled as part of the Microsoft Office suite of programs. The next year an improved version of 4, called Excel 5, introduced many welcome changes.

• Excel 95-2003

In 1995, Microsoft released its first significant redesign of its Windows operating system, Windows 95. Excel also received a major reworking and re-branding; the new version was dubbed Excel 95, as were all of the programs in the Office suite. The next several versions of the software continued this branding, and saw the release of Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002 and Excel 2003. Each version saw improvements over its predecessor, though each was built upon the design established in Excel 95.

• Excel 2007

The newest release, Excel 2007, presented significant changes in both interface (such as the “ribbon,” replacing the traditional pull-down menu) and functionality. It was released in conjunction with the Microsoft Vista operating system, and carried many of the Vista design elements.

2.2 Advantages of Microsoft Excel

2.2.1 Create a Chart

Microsoft Excel gives you tools for quickly generating a chart or visual representation of the numbers in your worksheet, Charts clarify patterns that can get lost in columns of numbers and text, and they make your data more accessible to people who are not familiar with, or do not want to delve into, the details, Charts can make a greater impression that rows and columns of numbers because the mind perceives, processes, and recalls visual information more quickly that textual or numerical information. In addition, shapes and colors have real impact. With using Microsoft Excel you can charts with dramatic visual appeal quickly and easily. Simply select the data you want to chart and then choose a chart type from the Insert tab’s Chart group. Microsoft Excel provides several chart types from which to choose, including column, line, pie, bar, area, and scatter charts. In addition, each chart type has a number of subtype options.

2.2.2 Creating Formulas

By using Microsoft Excel formula is an equation that performs a calculation. A formula can consist of operators, functions, numbers, text, and cell references. You place formulas in cells. You can click a cell and then type your formula into the formula bar or you can type your formula directly directly into a cell.

2.2.3 Paste Link into Word

You can use Excel data within other programs, thereby extending your ability to use, analyze, and present your Excel data. In PowerPoint, you can use Excel worksheet to illustrate your presentations. You can add Excel data to Word or PowerPoint by using the copy and paste commands. The Copy command copies the Excel data. The Paste command places the copy in another document. When you copy and paste, if you make changes to the original Excel document, you must go into the Word or PowerPoint document and update it as well. You can also copy Excel data into Word or PowerPoint by using a paste link. When you use a paste link, if you alter Excel data in Word or PowerPoint, Office automatically updates the Excel source document.

2.2.4 Save

After you complete the work of entering, formatting, analyzing, and charting your data, you can share it with others. Sharing data usually means either saving it and sharing the file, or saving it and sharing a print out. Microsoft Excel make your work easier to share with others.

2.2.5 Protect your worksheet

You can protect your worksheet so others can view and print it but cannot make changes to it. You can also save your workbook as a template. By saving your workbook as a template, you eliminate the chore of recreating a special-purpose worksheet each time you need to use it. In addition, you can save documents in many formats.

2.2.6 Printing

By using Microsoft Excel you can print multiple-page worksheets and multiple-sheet workbooks. You find out how to select noncontiguous cell ranges and print them and how to repeat row and column labels across several pages. The two key printing tools are the Page Setup dialog box and the Print Preview window. Familiarize yourself with the many choices they offer.

2.4 Conclusion

Microsoft Word very useful for us, because anything also can write can be done on word. So reports, essays, projects, experimental write ups etc. It allows us to present projects in the same way that a professional would. It makes high quality presentation possible to everyone and therefore first impressions are normally good. We can import diagrams, photographs, tables, accounts, databases and even drawings into the document. Besides that, we can underline, make text bold and italic so as to emphasis a part of the document. It has a word and grammar checker within the program so this allows me work to be much improved. It also helps the marker or teacher as it is very easy to read which is not always easy with the hand written word.

Microsoft Excel is also very useful for us, because we can use Excel data within other programs, thereby extending your ability to use, analyze, and present your Excel data. In PowerPoint, we can use Excel worksheet to illustrate your presentations. We can add Excel data to Word or PowerPoint by using the copy and paste commands. Besides that, we also can protect our worksheet by using Microsoft Excel, so others can view and print it but cannot make changes to it. We can also save your workbook as a template. By saving our workbook as a template, we eliminate the chore of recreating a special-purpose worksheet each time you need to use it. In addition, we can save documents in many formats.